Week 34 Thursday (Year 2)

Readings: Apocalypse 18:1-2, 21-23, 19:1-3, 9a; Psalm 100; Luke 21:20-28

It is easy to talk in apocalyptic terms and to play with the images which the Book of Revelation contains. It is easy to toy with images of destruction, the collapse of cities, cataclysms of great violence, the end of ordinary life. It is a far different matter to live through an experience like that, as many people do every day, in this past year the people of Ukraine in particular. How imagine the heartbreak as people are forced to abandon their homes and towns? The heartbreak of leaving sons and fathers and husbands behind? The heartbreak of seeing the contempt with which their country is treated by the aggressor? The heartbreak as they see important buildings and monuments destroyed, cities devastated. And such experiences are repeated in many parts of the world where there are wars and rumours of wars, famine and pestilence, oppression and destruction.

It is easy also to say 'at the heart of the great drama of the Apocalypse stands the Lamb who opens the seals, the key to history, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world'. It is easy to say, of the apocalyptic texts we find in the gospels, that always at the heart of these dramas is the Son of Man, coming on the clouds with power and great might.

Of course we believe these things to be true. And a voice saying these things from a place of comfort and security is one thing. Voices like those of the Dominican friars in Ukraine or the Dominican sisters in Iraq some years ago, faithful through months and even years of loss, and keeping faith in the Lamb of God and the Son of Man - well that is a very different thing. These are voices speaking from the midst of destruction and persecution. These are voices that inspire and encourage all who hear them. These are voices that continue to say to us, in the darkest of moments and out of the darkest of situations, 'raise your heads, trust in the Lord, because your redemption is always near at hand'.